Book Description
This provocative work explores the invention and reinvention of a fundamental goal of American social policy -- universal health care. In Health Security for All, Alan Derickson examines the emergence of diverse proposals for all-encompassing health reform since the early twentieth century. This study discovers not only a number of imaginative arguments for extending health services but also an unexpectedly wide array of passionate advocates for universalism.
An innovative approach to one of the great unresolved social and political problems of our time, Health Security for All will be of interest to social scientists, health policy scholars, historians, and idealists across the political spectrum.
Book Description
A lawyer, social critic, and columnist at The American Prospect, Wendy Kaminer has said that she likes to think words have power but knows they don't cast spells. She argues with her readers and expects them to argue back. Her taste for liberty, her legal training, wit, and innate contrarianism help her elude the usual political labels and inform her writings on censorship, feminism, pop psychology, religion, criminal justice, and a range of rights and liberties at issue in the culture wars.
In this new collection, Kaminer has her sights set on the fate civil liberties in America. Opening with a powerful overview of liberty's tenuous hold on this "land of the free," Kaminer offers incisive, original investigations of political freedom in our frightened, post-September 11 world and reviews perennial threats to sexual and religious liberty, free speech, privacy, and the right to be free from unwarranted, unprincipled prosecutions. She writes with a sense of the past, an understanding of the present, and concern about the future of American freedom.
Lindsay Nelson has written a Discussion Guide to Free For All for Unitarian Universalist Communities.
Wendy Kaminer is the author of many books, including I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional: The Recovery Movement and Other Self-help Fashions; A Fearful Freedom: Women's Flight from Equality; It's All the Rage: Crime and Culture; True Love Waits; and most recently Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and the Perils of Piety. Her articles and reviews have appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, and Newsweek, and her commentaries have aired on National Public Radio.
Customer Reviews:
Highlights the Necessity and Beauty of Liberty!.......2004-07-05
"Freedom" and "liberty" seem like two of the most over-used and under-appreciated words in our contemporary political vocabulary. Left-wingers might champion the freedom of dissenting speech (or freedom to abort a fetus), while opining about the necessity of hate speech legislation and railing against the right to own a firearm. Right-wingers might champion association rights and freedom of contract, but might rail to the death to regulate 'indecency' and stand opposed to the freedom of gays to marry. As Wendy Kaminer notes several times in this beautiful book, we tend to treat liberty as we do tax loopholes: we only champion the ones we use; to hell with the others.
Mrs. Kaminer's book, constructed from essays she has written mainly for The American Spectator magazine, shows that she, unlike most, is not that fickle. The antithesis of the partisan zeolot, Kaminer nobly defends civil liberties and freedoms WHEREVER they need defending. Whether it be defending liberty against the vicious assults they've encountered via the war on terror, or defending the rights of private conservative groups to discriminate against homosexuals if they choose, Mrs. Kaminer consistently champions liberty - everyone's liberty.
This book will most probably appeal to two groups - liberals and libertarians. While Mrs. Kaminer certainly approaches issues non-ideologically, she is much harder on right wing attacks liberty (regulating indecency on the internet, opposition to gay marriage and abortion rights, forcing the pledge, etc.) than on left-wing ones (speech codes, push for reparations, etc.) What's more, as a true civil libertarian, Mrs. Kaminer, as often as not, finds herself defending unsavory characters like pornographers, NAMBLA, criminal defendants denied due process rights, and the like - groups that tend to give conservatives more disease than liberals. But far be it from me to generalize; buy the book if you are concerned about liberty, no matter what side you stand on.
The only two complaints I have tend to do with the format as a collection of essays. First, most essays here are ridiculously short - averaging about three pages. While this is good if you are a casual reader that might read one or two essays at a time, the more serious reader will find the lack of depth that 3 page essays afford frustrating. Second, as these are essays there is a significant overlap of information from one essay to the next. For instance, the chapter of essays on post-Sept. 11 liberty are well written, but after the first few, the repitition of information gets cumbersome and, to be honest, I started questioning whether i needed to read all of them.
All in all, though, this book is a sorely needed, non-partisan, defense of liberty and freedom (and its peicemeal encroachment) in contemporary America. If we ever hope to reverse the trend, journalists like Wendy Kaminer becoems absolutely necessary.
True Civil Libertarian.......2004-01-03
In this book, Wendy Kaminer, lawyer and civil libertarian, compiles many of her essays from her column in the American Prospect about censorship, religious freedom, women's rights, anti-individualism, rights of the accused, and post 9-11 curtailings of civil liberties in the United States. Kaminer makes a clear distinction between civil liberties, which are the laws protecting citizens from unjust government power and control, and civil rights, in which government power is used to protect the rights of a marginalized or minority population from other citizen groups. Kaminer criticizes both the right and the left in her attempts to find an appropriate balance, and she leans strongly toward individual freedoms except where clear, unambiguous discrimination is taking place.
This thoughtful and articulate book is particularly easy to read in chunks because each concise essay is only a few pages long. Kaminer's discussions of patriotic descent are strong and well-stated: "When you force children to salute the flag and recite the 'Pledge of Allegiance' you don't teach then to exercise freedom so much as you accustom them to the imposition of political orthodoxies." It is clear that she believes it is important not to violate fundamental principles of freedom, such as those defined in the Bill of Rights, even if doing so may result in short-term political gains: "...right and left, people who find themselves in possessions of power tend to resist restraints upon its use. ...What distinguishes a civil libertarian is a focus on preserving fair process rather than obtaining particular results." Kaminer takes to heart Voltaire's words: "I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it," and I'm sure she would support the ACLU's 1978 court case protecting the free speech of a new-Nazi group and Noam Chomsky's defense of Faurisson's right to question or deny the Holocaust.
While Kaminer's criticisms all are well-stated and have merit, her lack of analysis or outright dismissal of the role of power, agency, and systematic biases is at times unsatisfying. For example, while she supports reproductive rights, she criticizes the Hill vs. Colorado ruling establishing "buffer-zones" around abortion clinics where "even peaceful antiabortion protests are prohibited." While her arguments about "silencing political speech" and valuing the "imagined right not to be offended over a right to give offense" are legitimatize, women seeking abortion information face far more than offensive language, often facing threats of physical violence, vigilante retribution, and public exposure, resulting in essentially restricted access. To give her due credit, Kaminer does write that "an unregulated marketplace inevitably exploits the most powerless members of society and produces gross inequalities of wealth that effectively prevent many people from enjoying the rights to which they're entitled," and it would be difficult to provide an appropriate depth of discussion about these dynamics while maintaining brevity, focus and accessibility in her essays.
http://www.theonion.com/onion3211/acludefends.html
Timely collection of essays in defense of the Bill of Rights.......2003-02-22
Social conservatives, Stalinist feminists, and political correct Democrats (not to mention the Christian soldiers of the Bush administration) will find no comfort here. Wendy Kaminer is going to come down on the side of individual freedom against governmental power whatever the issue at hand.
In this collection of essays, mostly from her column in The American Prospect, Kaminer looks at issues ranging from anti-terrorist encroachments on civil liberties to anti-abortion protests, and invariably comes down on the side of individual liberty, even when she has to share close quarters with the likes of NAMBLA or "pro-fetal life" abortion clinic demonstrators. Her justification is a fine restatement of the civil libertarian position: "If the First Amendment only protected sensible speech, we'd inhabit a very quiet nation indeed." (p. 80)
Because she writes with passion and wit, and because now more than at any recent period in our nation's history, there is the danger of "An Imperial Presidency" (p. 13), we need her and others like her--whether we agree completely with them or not--as a counter to the anti-civil libertarian designs of Ashcroft, Rumsfeld and Bush. Kaminer represents in these pages the loyal opposition that largely went into hiding after September 11th.
Her main concern is for the health of the Bill of Rights, which suffered from cardiac arrest as the Twin Towers fell. Kaminer sees the resulting struggle between the Bush administration's desire to increase its power, and the individual's desire for privacy and due process, as a struggle between our collective need for security and our desire for freedom. When people are in fear they will let go of some of their liberties in order to feel secure. Consequently today is a time of particular danger because many Americans are understandably afraid.
Kaminer also addresses free speech on high school campuses, media censorship, abortion rights, victim's and defendant's rights, gay rights, Bush's faith-based program, and other cutting edge issues. Her style is readable, thoughtful and penetrating. She comes from a position of considerable authority as a social critic, a lawyer, and best-seller author (e.g., I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional). She knows the facts and she knows the law, but more than anything she knows how to express what she feels in an engaging manner. Consider how she makes this very delicate, but true, observation: "I don't imagine that he welcomed it, but September 11 was not a bad day politically for George Bush."
Or, note her observation that we don't need a first Amendment to protect popular, inoffensive speech. We need it to protect speech that a "Lynn Cheney or Joe Lieberman" might consider demeaning and degrading. She adds, "Censorship campaigns often begin with a drive to protect children (or women), but rarely end there." (p. 40) My only nitpick is that Kaminer didn't devote some space to the farcical, hypocritical, and disastrous "war on drugs" that is also eroding our liberties. Maybe that will be the subject of her next book.
Rigorous, but witty, civil libertarian.......2002-11-15
Threats to civil liberties are greater than ever since September 11, 2001. Due process rights are the most obvious casualties, but privacy, church-state separation, and other civil rights are being eroded, particularly for groups outside the mainstream.
Wendy Kaminer's latest book, "Free For All: Defending Liberty in America Today", is therefore extremely timely and relevant. Kaminer is a lawyer, author, and social critic, whose previous books include "Sleeping With Extraterrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and the Perils of Piety", and "I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional: The Recovery Movement and Other Self-Help Fashions". "Free For All" is a collection of her essays on civil liberties from the past several years, both before and after 9/11. Most of the pieces appeared in "The American Prospect", though a few are included from other publications such as "Free Inquiry" and "Dissent".
The topics she addresses include freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to privacy, defendant's rights, women's rights, and many related issues. A number of themes crop up repeatedly, including the following: When people favor giving up rights, they usually have in mind other people's rights. Civil libertarianism requires applying the Golden Rule to people you dislike. Civil liberties (freedom to X) often conflict with civil rights (freedom from X). Threats to civil liberties tend to come from those who want people to "be good," whether according to Christian morality on the right, or political correctness on the left. We should be especially wary of expansions of government power, especially prosecutorial power, which are likely to lead to erosion of individual freedom. And sadly, Americans tend to pay only lip service to liberties that are supposedly inalienable.
Kaminer is politically liberal, but she does not shy away from positions that make liberals queasy, because they are required by a strict civil libertarian interpretation of the Constitution. Some of her possibly controversial positions include:
* Free speech rights of abortion protesters must be protected. Furthermore, trying to shield abortion patients from protest undermines the feminist position that women can and should make autonomous decisions about abortion.
* Groups such as the Boy Scouts do have the right to discriminate against gays and atheists (and face the social consequences of doing so). Their rights to free speech and free association trump the desire to enforce equal treatment by non-government groups.
* Evangelism in schools (that is not endorsed by the school) should not be prohibited in the name of protecting children. "Sectarian religious groups that seek access to public schools are unlikely to compare themselves to pornographers, but they do rely on First Amendment rights." (p. 101) In both situations, it is the job of parents, not the state, to protect children.
These essays are necessarily snapshots in time. Most of the pre-9/11 pieces have been rewritten in the past tense, to reflect the changing face of civil liberties since that date. Two pre-9/11 essays are left in the present tense, to underscore the fact that civil libertarians were already alarmed well before the terrorist attacks. Many of the restrictions currently being used by the Bush/Ashcroft regime were enabled by the Counter-Terrorism Act of 1996. The attacks of 9/11 simply provided the first opportunity to apply them on a wide and well-publicized scale. The "USA PATRIOT" Act is merely icing on the cake.
"Free For All" is well worth reading if you interested in civil liberties in general. It provides a wide-ranging, thorough, and entertaining exploration of current issues. If eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, then Wendy Kaminer is standing guard, and letting us know that all is not well.
Equally critical of Left & Right opponents of civil liberty.......2002-09-17
Thank goodness for Wendy Kaminer. A consistent thinker in the midst of our culture of conflict between fabricated absolutist alternatives.
This book is a collection of short essays on the state of American liberties which previously appeared in the "The American Prospect" over the past two years. They have been updated with additional material to confront the issues in civil liberty which have appeared after 9/11.
Censorship, religious freedom, women's rights, and homeland security are just some of the topics covered in these bite-size essays. The author's pen spares no sacred cows of either the Right or the Left. The feminist movement's campaign against pornography is vilified with as much fervor as is the conservative effort to criminalize flag burning. Both efforts are attempts at limiting unpopular speech. Kaminer shows them both to be the silly shibboleths of sanctimonious speech suppressors.
I don't agree with the author's opinions on every issue covered in the book. Her take on the criminal justice system, immigration, and social equality are a bit too left of center for my tastes. However, I am proud of her right to her opinions and her courage to care about the rights of others with whom she disagrees. If only we could all care with this much eloquence.
Book Description
The New Deal placed security at the center of American political and economic life by establishing an explicit partnership between the state, economy, and citizens. In America, unlike anywhere else in the world, most people depend overwhelmingly on private health insurance and employee benefits. The astounding rise of this phenomenon from before World War II, however, has been largely overlooked. In this powerful history of the American reliance on employment-based benefits, Jennifer Klein examines the interwoven politics of social provision and labor relations from the 1910s to the 1960s. Through a narrative that connects the commercial life insurance industry, the politics of Social Security, organized labor's quest for economic security, and the evolution of modern health insurance, she shows how the firm-centered welfare system emerged. Moreover, the imperatives of industrial relations, Klein argues, shaped public and private social security.
Looking closely at unions and communities, Klein uncovers the wide range of alternative, community-based health plans that had begun to germinate in the 1930s and 1940s but that eventually succumbed to commercial health insurance and pensions. She also illuminates the contests to define "security"--job security, health security, and old age security--following World War II.
For All These Rights traces the fate of the New Deal emphasis on social entitlement as the private sector competed with and emulated Roosevelt's Social Security program. Through the story of struggles over health security and old age security, social rights and the welfare state, it traces the fate of New Deal liberalism--as a set of ideas about the state, security, and labor rights--in the 1950s, the 1960s, and beyond.
Book Description
"A shocking document that reveals how the great reforms once promised by this landmark decision were systematically undermined."—Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the doctrine of "separate but equal" was unconstitutional. Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., was not even two at the time, and his family, farm workers in southern California, had scant knowledge of how keenly the ruling would affect them. In All Deliberate Speed Ogletree examines the personal ramifications of the decision for him and his family—his childhood in the wake of the Brown decision, his student days at Stanford and Harvard Law, his immersion in the Boston busing crisis—and its meaning for all Americans. Presenting a vivid pageant of historical characters including Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King, Jr., Earl Warren, Anita Hill, and Clarence Thomas, Ogletree discusses the ambivalence of our judicial system, the increasing legal challenges to affirmative action, and the issue of reparations. Informed throughout by brilliant legal insight, All Deliberate Speed compellingly traces the history of race and integration in American society, and will promote intense debate and reconsideration.
Customer Reviews:
Ogletree has admitted to plagiarism!.......2004-09-28
Charles J. Ogletree has admitted to word for word plagiarism on the Harvard University website! Research before you buy..
Professor Ogletree Puts You There.......2004-09-12
Professor Ogletree has been part of or witnessed some of the greatest moments in the struggle. This book puts you in the moment and gives an incredibly personal and up-close account of the events. Riveting.
Great!.......2004-07-14
This is great book. It gives the real story behind brown vs the board of education. Also, it gives a lot of history relating to the struggles of black people in the last 100 years.
"Bearing Witness to the Truth" -- All Deliberate Speed.......2004-05-26
All Deliberate Speed bears witness to the truth about our two party education system. This book should be on the required reading list for all students in both high school and college. It is a must read for law students who take, or contemplate taking constitutional law courses or anyone who truly wants to understand the impact of Brown v. Board of Education.
All Deliberate Speed speaks the truth. In some chapters the author gives you hope and in other chapters, the author allows the reader to ponder the future. Reading and understanding this book should help eliminate un-substantiated bias against integration. However, there is no question that the author points out the damage racial segregation, housed and surrounded by inequality, does to our society.
For example, in chapter six, Ogletree clearly exposes the reader to the fact that our government denied African-Americans full citizenship rights through legislation, judicial decisions as well as Jim Crow customs and behaviors.
Was the denial of full citizenship rights (education, accommodations, housing, voting) for African-Americans a grant of "affirmative action" for the white majority? Does the phrase "all deliberate speed" give or take away from the impact or the seriousness of the Brown decisions? Ogletree addresses these question and others in his 'adept' analysis of the decisions in Brown v. Board I and in Brown v. Board II.
Ogletree masterfully points out that a proper education includes, but is not limited to ethnic diversity, safe buildings, good teacher pay, desks, books, parental involvement, technology, etc. A proper education for all supports ones ability to successfully integrate oneself into our society and is germane to our survival as a nation. All Deliberate Speed is an excellent, excellent book. Easy to read, easy to understand, provocative, educational and truthful. Separate but equal is inherently un-equal.
Riveting!.......2004-05-25
As a first gerneration recipient of the benefits of Brown v Board of Education, it was enlightning to get a up-close view of the behind the scene goings-on of the attempts to stall and erode the promise of "Brown". This is a must read for the public..... to be aware of the diabolical machinations that go on in the back rooms of power to attempt to deny the basic and fundamental right to a good education.
Professor Ogletree illustrates that the promise of "Brown" remains unfulfilled and that we cannot stop fighting the resistance to that promise.
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United States of America: Rights for All
Amnesty International
Manufacturer: Amnesty International UK
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ASIN: 086210274X |
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All Right Let Them Come: The Civil War Diary of an East Tennessee Confederate (Voices of the Civil War)
John Guilford Earnest
Manufacturer: University of Tennessee Press
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 1572332336 |
Book Description
At a time when opinions were fervent and loyalties were divided in East Tennessee, John G. Earnest ultimately sided with the Confederate Army after reconciling for himself the conflicting arguments surrounding the Southern cause in the Civil War. In September 1862, after studying at Emory & Henry College in Virginia, he enlisted at age twenty with the 60th Tennessee Infantry, joining the men who organized the last volunteer units from East Tennessee. This addition to the Voices of the Civil War series tells his story.
All Right Let Them Come is Earnest's diary; it offers rare observations into the life of an East Tennessee Confederate soldier and the events surrounding his involvement in the transfer to the western Confederate front and the siege of Vicksburg. The passages on the fighting at Chickasaw Bayou and at Big Black Bridge near Vicksburg cast light on the military defects of Earnest's unit. The generally poor performance of the East Tennessee Confederate troops has long been assumed to stem from the region's sharply divided loyalties to the Union and Confederacy and from the fact that these soldiers were moved great distances from the homelands they had volunteered to defend. Earnest's narrative suggests that the weaknesses in these troops may also have come from a lack of training and discipline.
Earnest's diary provides an interesting and readable account of day-to-day life of a low-ranking officer. Material on the daily routines of camp life, on the limitations of the transportation system, which hindered the South's war efforts, and on travel across the western Confederacy address the lack of provisions, deficits in the Confederate soldiers' discipline and morale, and the South's difficulties in maintaining a cohesive, powerful fighting force in the Western Theater.
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Red Power: The Native American Civil Rights Movement (Landmark Events in Native American History)
Troy R. Johnson
Manufacturer: Chelsea House Publications
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United States of America Rights for All
Manufacturer: Amnesty International
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ASIN: 1887204156 |
Books:
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- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
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- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
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